The green revolution: hero or executioner?
In the immediate aftermath of India's independence, all international experts agreed that India, with its underdeveloped agriculture and exploding population, would plunge into famine. Nehru, then Prime Minister, even declared "everything else can wait, but not agriculture". The country overturned all predictions, betting on the Green Revolution: a massive industrialization of agriculture. Immediately after independence, pesticides were introduced for the first time, soon accompanied by GMOs and heavy machinery.
But while the Green Revolution helped to feed the population in the short term, today it could plunge it into famine. Overexploited soils are now devoid of nutrients and can no longer retain water. This phenomenon, known as soil desertification, is particularly ferocious in states such as Rajasthan, where 60% of the soil is now cracked. The uncontrolled use of pesticides, meanwhile, has decimated the insect population, particularly pollinators, but has also polluted water tables. These conditions have pushed farmers into such precarious situations that India has been witnessing a wave of farmer suicides since 1990. This is particularly true of the central and western states, such as Maharashtra, which has been hardest hit.
Fortunately, other farmers are determined to make their own resolution. The organic sector, though still a minority, is booming. Sikkim, a state surrounded by Nepal and Bhutan, is a model in this respect: it has been 100% organic since 2015. In the south of the country, in Andhra Pradesh, water shortages and poor soil quality have prompted the government of this agricultural state to completely rethink its agricultural model. It created a community-based natural agriculture program, without an organic label, but without chemical inputs. Trained by the state, the farmers have now replaced chemical fertilizers with manure, and given new life to their soils. They now form the world's largest agroecology project!
Respect for nature: a question of religion
With four out of five Indians being Hindus, the solution to ecological problems may well be religious. This polytheistic religion is based on a profound respect for nature. It is organized around a system of caste hierarchies, based on spiritual purity. Animals, too, find a place in these castes, as Hinduism sees Man as a part of nature, not as separate or even superior. Cows, rats, squirrels, snakes, monkeys and many others are sacralized and venerated.
In some Hindu communities, this respect for nature is even more fundamental. Such is the case of the Bishnoi, a community of 700,000 people, mainly found in Rajasthan. Their ideology is based on a profound respect for all living things, to the extent that it is forbidden to kill an animal or cut down a living tree, that all members are vegetarians and that they must share part of their harvest with wildlife. In 1730, a major massacre was committed against them, when they opposed the felling of trees ordered by the maharaja, by wrapping their arms around themselves.
Although it's difficult to talk about ecology, respect for nature is deeply rooted in Hinduism, just as it is in Buddhism. A large part of the Indian population sees itself as linked to other living beings, which it must protect. If this spirituality has been undermined by two centuries of British colonialism, it could, according to many thinkers, be the key to the ecological crisis in which India finds itself.
Pollution records
India is home to 39 of the world's 50 most polluted cities in 2022, according to a ranking by the Swiss air quality analysis institute IQAir. At the top of the list is Bhiwadi (Rajasthan), a city some sixty kilometers from New Dehli, itself second in the ranking. The culprits are vehicle exhaust fumes, industrial fumes and slash-and-burn agriculture. This agricultural method, which is widespread in the northern Indian states most affected by pollution in India, consists of cleaning the fields with fire at the end of the harvest.
For the time being, the solutions are still too weak, given the scale of the problem. New Delhi is gradually putting in place a policy to encourage the purchase of electric vehicles, through consumer subsidies and road tax exemptions. But many problems remain, such as the lack of electric recharging stations when leaving the capital. For the time being, electric vehicles still only account for 1% of those on the road in the city, which remains, for the fifth year running, the most polluted capital in the world. On a national scale, political measures are again lacking in vigor. Yet air pollution is responsible for the deaths of 1.6 million Indians every year.
Mountains of waste
Managing the waste of 1.4 billion people is no easy task. Lacking the infrastructure to store, sort and recycle it, it piles up in numerous open-air dumps. The Ghazipur landfill in New Delhi even made the international press: at 75 m high, this mountain of waste is now taller than the Taj Mahal! Yet these landfills represent a major risk to public health, forcing local residents to cohabit with rats and other vermin, or breathe toxic gases from the fermentation of waste.
In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Clean India Mission program, aimed at improving sanitary conditions. The program has resulted in street cleaning, organization of waste management, and implementation of recycling, which remains too timid, however. In 2022, the government has also banned the use of certain single-use plastics. While these efforts are still too feeble, one thing is undeniable: India today is a little cleaner than it used to be.
The government can also count on the mobilization of part of the population. Clean-up projects run by citizens or associations are springing up all over the country. In 2015, Versova beach in Mumbai (Bombay) was completely cleaned of garbage. Dozens of citizens joined the cause of a man who had decided to restore the image of this beach covered by a layer of over 1.5 m of plastic waste. It took six years to remove the 5,000 tonnes of garbage. It was worth the effort: once cleaned up, the beach once again became a nesting place for sea turtles, which had previously deserted it.
A climate in two stages
In the past, India had well-defined seasons, but today its climate is polarized. It now experiences one season of extreme drought, and another of intense monsoons. According to a study by the Centre for Science and Environment, in 2022, the country experienced extreme weather phenomena on an almost daily basis: hailstorms, dust storms, floods, landslides, drought, cyclones, heatwaves, cold snaps..
Droughts, which are becoming longer and more intense, are all the more dangerous when combined with poor water management on a national scale. Like waste, blue gold benefits from too few storage and treatment infrastructures, while groundwater is overexploited, particularly by agriculture. Thus, in 2022, faced with yet another drought that reduced harvests, India was forced to cut wheat exports to ensure its own food security.
The country of 100 national parks
India boasts over a hundred national parks, as well as numerous other areas protected by other statutes. They are often intended as refuges for a biodiversity threatened by the ecological crisis the country is experiencing. For example, Keoladeo Ghana National Park, once a hunting ground for the maharaja, is now home to some of the rarest avian fauna. It is home, for example, to the Siberian crane, one of the world's most endangered birds.
Gir National Park is the only place on earth where Asiatic lions(Panthera leo persica) roam freely. This subspecies of lion, once abundant throughout southern Asia and as far south as Arabia, finds its last refuge here. The good news is that its population is on the increase in the park. To prevent the loss of this population alone, the government has set up a program to reintroduce the Asiatic lion to other regions.
There are many programs of this type, aimed at the conservation of different animals. The most famous is Project Tiger, which has been reintroducing the Bengal tiger to many of the country's parks since 1973. The first to participate was Corbett National Park. The program has more than doubled the country's Bengal tiger population.
